Have Conservatives Lost the Culture War？ - Ed West
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Summary
Ed West is a writer for Unheard and an author. His latest book, Small Men on the Wrong Side of History is about the decline and potential unlikely return of conservatism, as he puts it. In this episode of Trigonometry, Francis and Constantine talk to Ed about his journey from a conservative upbringing to a liberal one.
Transcript
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Progressives, basically, you know, they came out, well, there was a generational thing.
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They were the youngsters of the 60s, they're fighting against their parents.
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And it was an ideology that sort of came out of rebellion.
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And it's always defined itself by, you know, by being, you know, against the man.
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And then once you are the man, like, what do you do then?
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And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
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Our brilliant guest today is a writer for Unheard and an author, Ed West.
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We've been really enjoying many of the articles you wrote and your latest book,
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Small Men on the Wrong Side of History, which is about the decline and potential unlikely
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But before we get into the conversation itself, let me ask you a very broad question,
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which is mainly who are you how are you where you are what has been your journey through life
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um well as i sort of put in the book the book is basically a bit of autobiography as well um i'm
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one of those lame people who's never went on that sort of journey from left to right which i sort of
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i always feel jealous of those people because um i suppose i was basically always quite conservative
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and uh but as i got older i sort of noticed my friends were actually becoming like more liberal
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as the whole world basically went in the direction.
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So it was kind of inevitable that I'd get into this.
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My dad was a foreign correspondent during the Cold War
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and he became very reactionary, like comically reactionary.
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He was like anti-enlightenment he thought was a terrible idea.
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um yeah so a bit eccentric so that's why i think that you know basically influenced me so i was
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basically born with the red pill you know my mouth it was just there was never any of that
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youthful frolicking with liberalism um so yeah so that was very much like the cold war sort of
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background atmosphere so we sort of knew all about that um you know communism was kind of this great
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evil um and now i've grown up and the communists are sort of winning i think in a way in a strange
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way well psychologically yeah we'll get into that because one of the most fascinating articles i've
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read in recent times was your piece about how actually the cultural revolution is complete
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right maybe let's get right into that tell when you say the communists are kind of winning what
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do you mean it sounds a bit reds under the bed to a lot of people yeah it probably might make me
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sound like a bit of a loony but that's probably true um my basic thing is what i noticed about
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you know the kind of people in the past you'd have like personality traits match politics so
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if you're quite um if you're quite conscientious and uptight and you know really obsessed like
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i was really early today because i'm conservative i hate being late um so conscientious people tend
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to be like quite conservative while people are more neurotic and more open-minded tend to be
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liberal so that's why the arts are liberal but what i noticed more and more recently is that if
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you meet someone who's very conscientious and uptight the kind of person in the 50s who would
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be like you know your arch conservative they now the young ones anyway tend to sort of believe in
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all the sort of progressive sort of ideas the dominant ideas you know they will you know they
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will be obviously very pro-remain um they will be they'll be quite sympathetic to blm because it's
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like a decent thing to do you know quality um and so gareth southgate was basically like a sort of
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stopping our point of that article you know he said that we should take the knee and i thought
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well, it's kind of interesting that now that's what happens
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The actual revolution has become quite conservative
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I mean, it's the same with the communist regimes in Eastern Europe
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And so they had their own moral order and they didn't want to change.
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The period we grew up in, I mean, especially comedy,
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like the golden age of comedy was probably around the turn of the millennium in my view because
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um everything was kind of up for grabs everything was like seinfeld was all about because no one
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knows what the what is like the social norm about stuff there's less confusion um now that so much
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comedy which couldn't be made in 2000 i mean which was made like that period which couldn't
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have been made in the 60s now can't be made again i use the example of life of brian which could
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never been made now uh just as it could never have been made in 1960 i mean the joke about
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you know a man who calls himself a woman which would obviously have been so self-evidently
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stupid in that time you just that would be impossible to make now um you couldn't blaspheme
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jesus because he's a prophet of islam uh you know i mean there is basically a de facto blasphemy law
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about islam is that people don't want to be beheaded generally um it's not a good career
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most it's generally not a good you know generally i mean loads of people come up this oh you know
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well i think i want to punch down i don't want to you know because they're in my notes it's like
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i want my head on my body that's like a base it's about fear yeah yeah um but then you know
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the trans thing is also you know that's also enforcing fear and that's a sort of new like
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pride like all the sort of the teenagers like love pride and pride is basically the same as
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like 100 years ago or 50 years ago if you went to malta or ireland or poland and the corpus
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christie procession where in june all the kids dress up and you know uh show their faith in the
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sort of state religion and now pride is basically that i mean that so to summarize your argument
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what you're really saying is we had a cultural revolution yeah where a lot of these progressive
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ideas were advanced and embedded into society and now we're at the point where it's the sort
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of middle management rung of society the people who who used to be the face of conservatism
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tradition etc this has become the new conservative tradition in a way this says even i mean it's
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based on some very like unconservative ideas fundamentally progressivism is unconservative
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because it's you know it's based on a blank slate it's all these kind of ideas but i mean you know
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the scott alexander i don't know if you follow he writes his blog in california it's just great
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it's the best blog and he makes the example you know he talks about the kind of like maiden aunt
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in the 50s who disapproved of everyone and you know the one the kind of classic maiden aunt
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young men really didn't like because they were stopped and having fun you know so tell you off
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your language tell you off about what you're saying you're reading the wrong books those
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if you heard about someone who is stopping you reading books now or telling you about language
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you can guarantee 100% they'll be on the left it'll be I mean it's almost guaranteed you know
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that same person is now saying you can't read that book because that kind of that book because
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it's racist rather than you know because it was sexual or um you know I don't want these bad
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people who have the wrong ideas sort of i mean there are just you know there are so many different
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examples of that where there is you know ideas are now fixed and there are sort of moral codes
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you know like we had the c words and now it's the n words i mean i think in the sense you know
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every society needs these kind of taboos and needs these you know things that can't be said
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um but you know it's and also the other thing is the moral relativism that was a massive thing
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you know that was a classic sort of like daily mail things oh these moral relativists like when
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was the last time you heard that talked about the left being moral relativists then they're not i
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mean they are completely the most i mean i wasn't left broadly i mean sort of the activists on
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campus the sort of progressives you know the woke people they're not moral relatives they're
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absolutely um confirmed in their moral beliefs you know there's there's no doubt about it whatsoever
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so that's what happens when you take control you don't allow these kind of questions of of doubt
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anymore. And what effect does that have on society that we're not allowed to question,
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that we're not allowed to play with these kind of ideas? I mean, I think you can never
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have effective outcomes if you have taboos about what is true. I mean, I think the Afghanistan
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thing is a classic example. I mean, the US has spent, is it a trillion? It's going to be two
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trillion when you deal with all the broken lives back in America. This was all based on a completely
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fraudulent idea of what is possible with Afghanistan. It's a completely naive idea
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we can turn Afghanistan into a liberal state. It's a very tribal culture, even taking away the
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religious, because there are Muslim countries which can be liberal, but Afghanistan is an
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incredibly clannish society. It's just never going to happen. If you could openly say,
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listen, the Afghans are not going to be liberal Democrats. There's huge amounts of taboos about
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stuff like that. So instead, that kind of really wasn't discussed properly. The result was thousands
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of deaths 20 years of wasted lives you know two trillion dollars you know you should have
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absolutely i don't believe there should be no taboos but you should be able to sort of say
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really uncomfortable truths the truth should not be taboos what you're really saying yeah i mean
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and there are loads of areas where you know we can never really say honestly what we think the
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truth is because no one wants their lives are in do i mean no one really wants to be a heretic
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do they or i mean they don't crush people don't put them in gulags anymore but no one wants to
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be unemployable or you know even worse have your you know bank card removed you know in the worst
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cases i mean let's push back on that a little bit there are people who have made careers that are
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being cancelled that is one of the arguments and gained a certain notoriety for themselves
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so is that really true i think there is you know there are certain people enjoy that kind of thing
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i'm certain you have to be really disagreeable kind of person um you know it's like katie
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hopkins or someone who likes being this kind of pantomime villain likes being hated um and then
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you can make a certain amount even they get you know the career move is very short even like
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something like milo yannapolis you know eventually he was taken on twitter and it was oh we'll make
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him stronger and more notorious no just ended his career now he's on something like no mark
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social website um but very few people i mean and those are sort of professional you know a
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professional columnist can say these things to a certain extent and be hated and they'll still
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got a job but it's the people in sort of ordinary jobs who can't say it i mean loads and loads of
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people have been sacked for example even after the blm thing you know loads of people saying
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oh you know can i just point out george floyd wasn't like exactly a saint you know he might
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have actually done some you know been to prison and blah blah and you know like eight there are
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eight or nine people who are sacked after that in britain um in various small jobs you know
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there's a policeman who sent a george floyd joke on this you know he was actually prosecuted you
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People do feel slightly scared to voice opinions.
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Because surely the vast majority of people in this country
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would identify themselves as woke or something.
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disproportionately educated, you know, well-off,
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A very small minority can really change the country rapidly,
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but you'll have another 20% who probably think,
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but I dislike the right more so give them a you know one of the examples I use in the book is
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you know the reformation it's you know the reformation started there were tiny little
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minority in university in not university well in Cambridge and London who are sort of you know
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radical Protestants and they you know they were a tiny minority and then 50 years later they were
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the majority and then you know the Catholics all of a sudden was you know the wrong side of history
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it's interesting you mentioned the reformation because the reformation of course I mean arguably
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in public opinion amongst Democrats in America,
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And that is entirely social media-led, I think.
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To the point where I think Barack Obama running in 2012
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or talking in 2014 can talk about the southern border
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in exactly the same way that Donald Trump talked about it.
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we've gone from that position being the standard position
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shared across both parties to where now anyone who says
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is now you're just racist now you can i mean you can trump's tone is obviously
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what his actual policies and you track them what about about and you know what what clinton was
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saying about and clinton's you know immigration advisor you know who's a black woman in the mid
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90s what was saying about diversity immigration would just put you so beyond the pale and that
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was just completely normal um and you know people i say of course society's changed but
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I know people disagree about, oh, the younger people
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I mean, I've always been a bit pessimistic about that,
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although recently I've kind of slightly changed my mind.
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until something that was completely normal four years ago
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now is considered like, you know, hate speech, literally.
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Yeah. So, you know, what are you complaining about?
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I mean, the Conservative Party is very good at, you know, at maintaining power by basically accepting the amount of change.
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That's fine. And, you know, being a more moderate version.
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But, you know, I would argue Conservatives have limited political power in this country.
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I mean, it's limited by the fact that you have to get elected and, you know, the majority.
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You know, like almost there is almost zero opposition to leftist cultural power.
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So I don't use the deep state, but all the institutions that are in the country are basically leftists.
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And there's very little, it seems very like little conservative appetite.
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To actually fight that would be a really, really like costly effort.
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When you say fight, so when you talk about the institutions, the BBC, I'm guessing?
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I mean, not just the BBC, but I mean, like charities, for example.
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You know, if you meet people working in the home office, you know, people will say, oh, I don't believe in prison.
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it's a sort of you know it's barbaric in a hundred years time we'll have no prisons like
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you your job is to people put people in prison like how can you or the ministry of justice sorry
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um you know the people within that are not conservatives and i mean even even this thing
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with stonewall like stonewall you know the government says oh we're gonna have some fight
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back we're gonna stop stonewall cooperate with stonewall um over the trans things like what
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on earth was stonewall doing in schools in the first place you've been in power for 10 years
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that is a very you know progressive organization that is not something you should be supporting
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and the only really fight back on you know the trans issue was was via basically feminists who
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are the people who sort of got the balls so to speak to stand up to more extreme elements so
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you can't even you know conservatives can't even fight that issue they have to sort of get
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leftist allies to do the fighting for them so there's you know very this is why i mean this is
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one of the reasons why i'm not you know so mad about brexit is that i think they've just put all
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their kind of all their effort was going into brexit basically like we've got to win this one
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argument and you know what little energy we've got it's going to go in this and you know we're
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not going to bother with any other sort of basic fight we have to have ed i think we've come and i
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to the point and i'm sure that you would agree with this where the labels we traditionally use
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left right conservative liberal they've kind of lost their meaning right because 20 years ago you
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could argue that everybody sitting in this room is a liberal not here man no i think yeah i think
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They used to crush the red pill into his breast milk.
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But let's be fair, look, I imagine pro-gay marriage,
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all of these things which you would ascribe to being liberal, right?
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I don't think anybody in this room would be described as liberal.
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I mean, I would definitely say what Americans know as liberal
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It's a real shame that both opponents insist on calling them liberals still.
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They should just refuse to do it as a principle.
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The ideology, which I suppose began, really had its roots in the 60s.
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It believes in certain core issues, but, you know, it doesn't, it's not,
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it's not pro-free speech necessarily, like progressive stentipianity.
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It's not pro-freedom of association, which is by definition racist and sexist.
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You know, it doesn't believe in those kind of core, like, beliefs
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Conservatism is still, I mean, I don't left and right.
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i mean i think there is still a sort of basic psychological mindset that differs between left
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and right there is still a that was always track i guess what what you're getting at though is
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peter hitchens for example would say the conservatives are no longer conservative
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either right yeah he's been saying yeah i mean he's been saying that for quite a long time
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i mean i love hitches he's great yeah and the second part so these labels don't really mean
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what they used to mean what's my point right i think that's partly because progressives are
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in power and so once you're in power you're like your your mindset changes i mean my problem is
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like progressives basically you know they came out of there was a generational thing they were
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the youngsters of the 60s are fighting against their parents um and it was an ideology that sort
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of came out of rebellion and it's always defined itself by you know by being like you know against
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the man and then once you you are the man like what do you do then i mean like how do you then
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frame it you know you just end up sort of fighting these complete like straw man battles against
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like an establishment which is just completely gone you know all this thing about oh you know
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why why aren't we just being taught like about the you know the british and this is all the
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stuff you're not taught at school about the british and it's like when was the last time
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like tissue teachers were like really right wing it's like when i was down in the 80s they you know
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they weren't like members of the empire loyalists at the time but like teachers have been lefty for
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like 50 or 60 years like who you are going against you're arguing against something that stopped
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being true you know they're making out like kids like learning our island story at school but all
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they're fighting against is like a society that never really exists anymore um it's interesting
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that you say because i think that's so true in comedy that a lot of comedians certainly not in
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our experience or in my experience felt like they were pushing against the system right when it was
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quite clearly observable by the decisions that were being made who was being booked to do tv
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etc that that way of thinking is embedded as the system exactly i mean like you're not it's not
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so you're not fighting back against the man you're not fighting back against anything you are part of
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the system that's propagating itself i mean that does make you know good comedy so like you know
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dave allen when he made jokes about the catholic church i mean that's the classic example i use
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people were really scared of the church and in ireland particularly you know like they can make
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your life a misery um so when he was sort of making these kind of jokes it'd be real that'd
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be really funny because people will be thinking that you know i've been thinking everything that
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my whole life and i can't say it um but yeah i mean if you're making sort of jokes about a sort
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of conservative system now there's just you know where is it like everyone says that i mean what's
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the yeah usually you know there's the pride flag flying from all our government buildings like
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where's where's the humor there so the second part of my question right yeah no it's good you
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apologize but not i love watching english people yeah sorry um what does it mean what is
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conservatism now what does it mean to be a conservative well that's a good question i
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mean i didn't actually finish answering the first one so the conservative party has always been
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an alliance between conservatives and liberals i mean that has been for well not always it's been
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for about since the labor party arose so you know you have different factions within it which you
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the Conservative Party was like an anti-socialist alliance.
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So its main job was to stop basically like Labour ruining equality.
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I suppose he is a proper Conservative, isn't he?
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he's a parody of a conservative i think that's the only way you can actually get away that now
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is by becoming a bit like a bit of a joke or like you can't do it earnestly because then you're just
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a monster yeah exactly then you just be treated like you're so beyond the power i mean the problem
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well i suppose you know the conservative classic argument say oh i'm just there to put the brakes
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on or you know driving the speed limit or um sort of stop things accelerating the problem is like
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when things accelerate so much if your job is just to slow things down it's like what are we heading
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towards like i mean take with the trans issue or like with diversity like at one point you just
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say like no enough there's no one i mean it seems very hard for someone to articulate that
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without kind of being monsters and i think there isn't really there isn't much kind of like no
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one's really volunteering to be that kind of the bad guy it's it's um i mean a basic point
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Since back in the 1990s, conservative opinions have been publicly quite taboo.
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Like saying, you know, probably conservative stuff.
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Well, I think if you look back at, say, the immigration thing in the late 90s,
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you know, Blair massively increased immigration.
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And I did a report ages ago on the BBC did this.
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And in some cases, they'll have like five or six people lying up saying,
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Basically, his job was the guy in wrestling dressed up like Iranian.
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how can you possibly object to a multicultural society?
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And the conservative view was supported by the majority of people.
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Yeah, although that's kind of losing because just reality.
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The thing with diversity is once you have diversity,
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it's, you know, taboos, it's irreversible, because it will be so monstrous to reverse it.
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So, it's enough. And then, like, where does it stop? I mean, with all these processes with
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progressism, there's no end point. That's the thing. You know, you can't just sign surrender
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papers and say, okay, it's over now. Can we just move on to the next, you know, can we just get on
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with our lives? Okay. There has to be. Another thing with gay marriage. Gay marriage is a good
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thing it's you know it's definitely defensible on conservative grounds i wonder would you have
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to gay marriage and and just end it there will it gay marriage inevitably leads like the trans
1.00
00:25:09.420
stuff becoming really like extreme i don't know i mean is it possible to end any of these changes
00:25:15.300
at one point and just say that's good and i don't want any more i'm not sure it is really do you buy
00:25:20.100
into the argument that a lot of these institutions like stonewall did great work in the 1960s
00:25:25.600
well let's be let's be honest gay people faced real oppression i mean stonewalls from later
1.00
00:25:30.580
they were named after um 60s 70s 70s and all the rest of it but they had their roots in the 60s
00:25:36.320
etc yeah well they're named after the stonewall riots yeah i mean there's there's no doubt about
00:25:39.540
it um you know every revolution like has good points right i mean the french revolution uh
00:25:47.820
was you know very necessary the system had to change you know i would argue that like
00:25:52.700
beheading thousands of people might have been a bit of an excess um that's a very english way of
0.79
00:25:57.820
putting it i mean yeah so uh uh a soviet functionary whose job it was to kill off all the people in
00:26:05.100
the purges said when you chop wood uh little bits will fly i mean i'm reading a book about the
00:26:12.700
russian revolution i mean i'd say there's probably not much that came out of that but you know the
00:26:15.980
system was rotten to start with yeah there was loads that need you know changing in society in
00:26:20.540
the 60s um you know i wouldn't argue about that i just think revolutions sort of revolutions have
00:26:25.880
in themselves a sort of uh no real end point so it's you know it's inevitably just going to go
00:26:33.400
more and more sort of crazy what about the idea that i think a lot of people are hopeful and look
00:26:38.620
as you say you you were a conservative from from birth uh i i i'm not conservative i think
00:26:45.100
temperamentally i don't know about francis i think you're becoming conservative aren't you
00:26:48.260
mate i'm gonna be on it yeah i think i am yeah there we go he's still pretending well i mean
00:26:52.640
i say as you get older you just can't help it no but the thing is the thing is that the what's
00:26:57.220
happened is francis was always on the old school left it's just the old school left is now yeah so
00:27:02.060
that's yeah right now it's definitely true there's uh but but a lot of people like me who who are
00:27:08.360
simultaneously not conservative but also deeply deeply against this progressive ideology the hope
00:27:16.060
i have is as you you alluded to earlier that young people rebel against the the their parents
00:27:23.460
generation essentially and now the children that are being born now are from basically this point
00:27:28.580
forward going to be born to millennials and younger people right so the if there are any
00:27:34.860
children i mean which is another issue with a touche but but those that are those that are
0.93
00:27:40.920
being born they are going to be they're going to be looking at their parents being useless and
00:27:45.860
talking about adulting and looking at that going actually you know we need to go full trad don't
00:27:50.820
you think that's kind of i think i think maybe i mean if you if you've got a liberal mindset you
00:27:54.760
don't like sanctimonious people telling you off saying you can't do that and then inevitably
00:28:00.000
those people now that's my issue with this whole ideology i mean as as a kid i you know i when i
00:28:06.620
went to church i really didn't like the sort of the sanctimonious old people who sort of say look
1.00
00:28:11.260
i'm better than you blah blah look i'm with this you know point is there's a very like a miserable
0.95
00:28:14.740
irish catholic church and just so the whole point is to look it's more miserable and i'm better than
0.99
00:28:18.700
you because i'm more miserable you're smiling like you can't do that um and those and that's
00:28:23.700
what i sort of i saw a lot of that amongst lefties that kind of you know i'm i'm taking this more
00:28:31.100
seriously the environment's more important to me i take racism more seriously all that kind of thing
00:28:46.000
like the trans thing is really interesting because the trans thing
00:28:48.900
I mean the argument that like a lot of feminists
1.00
00:28:51.260
say which I think is true is that it's like a very
00:28:53.220
I mean it's not a radical interpretation of sex
00:28:56.860
if you're a girly boy then you must be really a girl
0.96
00:29:04.200
you know and you know people in the 60s would say no you're just gender atypical you know you're
0.81
00:29:08.640
probably lesbian or gay and that's fine you can just do the other one now you sort of have to
0.92
00:29:12.180
have these kind of strict things and also this kind of obsession with categorization and identity
00:29:17.420
which is like a very conservative thing you know like the conservative mindset needs categories
00:29:21.380
because that's how they sort of see the world that's how they order it um so that is a very
00:29:26.880
sort of conservative thing so if you don't like categorization if you don't like the sort of
00:29:30.420
forced kind of almost like semi-religious like order of pride which is very like you you must
0.67
00:29:36.520
do this because this is what the community does then yeah you might turn against it i mean i think
00:29:40.700
i don't think young people will be conservative i think they'll probably be anti-woke which is
0.82
00:29:44.200
like what you are like a liberal anti-woke person which there are a lot of people you know lots of
00:29:48.660
people honestly will honestly say you know like i'm liberal but there's only one group of people
00:29:53.460
who are basically threatening my ability to talk normally.
00:29:59.960
This is what a lot of academics say secretly about liberal academics
00:30:06.900
who make life difficult are the kind of progressive ideologues
00:30:14.280
But no conservative is saying you can't study that
00:30:17.940
If they were in power, they probably would, but they're not.
00:30:22.760
Do you think there will be a flip where that changes?
00:30:24.800
Because I always laugh when people accuse me of being on the right
00:30:27.940
because I'm like, I have almost no doubt that 15 years from now,
00:30:32.540
I will be fighting against the right-wing, socially conservative, religious right
00:30:41.200
as comedians like Bill Hicks and George Carlin were in the 90s.
00:30:45.760
I have no doubt that there will be a point in my life
00:30:51.820
I think that is optimistic, but you think that's not going to happen?
00:30:55.360
I think, I mean, I think there might be a religious right in Britain
00:30:59.340
that is powerful, but I don't think it will be a Christian one.
0.58
00:31:13.180
I think there's almost nothing that can be done to stop it, to be honest.
00:31:17.060
And I don't think there's going to be a religious movement.
00:31:18.600
And I think without religion, you don't really get social conservatism
00:31:22.080
because the kind of default mindset then becomes utilitarianism.
00:31:27.260
I mean, if you're not religious, then utilitarianism just makes so much sense
00:31:37.880
I wouldn't say it's necessarily the best argument,
00:31:40.000
but if you're trying to order a society, how else are you going to do it?
00:31:43.280
I mean, if you're saying, you know, the gay marriage thing,
00:31:45.320
if you're a kind of traditionalist Catholic or Anglican,
00:31:49.500
It says it has to be between a man and a woman.
0.92
00:31:51.000
If you're utilitarian and say, well, marriage is about, you know,
00:31:55.820
people loving each other and want to make a partnership,
00:32:02.440
So, you know, there are so many different examples of,
00:32:07.540
I'm trying to think, the move towards utilitarianism
00:32:10.360
is basically just inevitable if you're not religious.
00:32:12.440
So I just don't think you can have a sort of socially conservative movement
00:32:15.540
yeah i agree with you and then fact i don't know you are not going to be facing some sort of
00:32:21.540
like you know council of vatican index censors in 15 years i reckon it would just be like the
00:32:26.240
same woke people but even worse well there you go guys that's that's reassuring there and even
00:32:31.340
crazy a lot you you but i mean we've always seen this throughout history the ebbs and flows and
00:32:37.000
it's never linear in that way yeah you just think do you do you think there's never going to be a
00:32:43.860
push back against this it's just it's going to be the new dogma forever and we're just going to
00:32:48.840
get more and more progressive i don't know i i think it's impossible to predict the future
00:32:53.660
i mean people tend to predict what they want to believe i would love to think that you know the
00:32:57.800
next generation i mean the only thing i you know i do lose this book is that there is huge birth
00:33:02.780
gap between conservatives and liberals and it's really opened up and never used to be
00:33:05.680
so you know liberal societies produce more conservative people i mean in the 50s i think
00:33:10.860
in America you know the average liberal it was like three or four kids each and now it's like
00:33:15.580
2.2 kids versus one and the difference is you know if you're a liberal person in 60s you'll
00:33:20.440
probably still be basically pressured into getting married by social forces or now there's more
00:33:27.460
freedom everyone can basically choose their own little niche uh I think now it'll take a long
00:33:32.020
time to have an impact um you know we're talking about generations and it's hard to say I mean
00:33:37.500
there are so many different factors out there aren't there i mean like what is the chinese
00:33:40.220
influence on western society going to be i mean is that i mean i'm pretty pessimistic to be honest
00:33:45.140
i just think it'll be like unbelievably horrible but um that will definitely affect how you know
00:33:50.100
the left and right see each other that conflict that is a very good point because that is a
00:33:57.120
conflict that we're not talking about and that we seem to have buried our heads in the sand about
00:34:01.120
because when you think about a lot of our huge you know multinational companies they're in hock
00:34:06.340
to China yeah they all are yeah uh you know money talks isn't it I mean the thing the Soviet Union
00:34:12.980
was undeniably like a force for evil but it was also economically inept so it was never gonna
00:34:19.820
really I mean once once in the 70s you know Hungary and all these other countries were so
00:34:25.080
in hock to the west for money so once you're you know once you owe people money they basically
00:34:28.920
control you you know but China I mean and you go back to the other sort of tyrannies we faced
0.97
00:34:33.620
um you know nazism was utterly evil but and you know but it was inevitably going to lead to war
00:34:38.420
very quickly and we had to destroy it chinese communism chinese whatever it is i mean they
1.00
00:34:43.900
that is in a way more dangerous because they are we basically owe them you know huge amounts of
00:34:49.040
money and you know what's going to be what's going to be you know done in exchange for that
00:34:54.820
so yeah that's that's another thing to be pessimistic about isn't it i've got a few more
00:35:16.020
it's the only thing they agree on Democrats and Republicans
00:35:27.960
Like a million people will come out of poverty.
00:35:30.220
But a huge amount of that was to do with China's entry
00:35:38.800
it wasn't as big as 9-11, obviously, as an issue,
00:35:49.180
The shift in American society was basically down to this change.
00:35:52.780
And at the same time, completely empowered China.
00:35:54.760
You know, Chimerica is definitely a thing.
0.96
00:35:57.960
And, you know, they're not fools, the people who run the Chinese Communist Party.
0.96
00:36:03.980
And, you know, slowly and surely, as British institutions are bought up by the Chinese,
1.00
00:36:08.180
and, you know, British public schools, British universities, British corporations,
00:36:12.320
eventually the thing is, you know, that guy who's criticising China on social media,
00:36:17.880
And I think the kind of progressive taboos have almost made us more open to cowardice as well.
00:36:25.280
like if that becomes the norm so you know well you know i can't say something about like you know
00:36:31.980
george floyd or the transism movement you know maybe i should just be cute quiet about
00:36:36.420
the chinese communist party you know because that's at least they've got loads of money so
00:36:40.840
um you know already there are lots of media people will be brought up for them i mean that's where
00:36:45.760
the money is isn't it so i mean we've definitely got an oversupply of journalists who need money
00:36:49.880
so that'll be like very easy to get speaking of journalism i mean that's an era obviously you're
00:36:55.780
involved with directly yourself but uh i've been watching and commenting on the decline of the
00:37:02.580
media right for quite some time we just had glenn greenwald on to talk about it right what what do
00:37:08.080
you think has happened to the media because there's quite a lot of evidence that the great
00:37:13.320
awakening is actually something that was led largely by elite discourse new york times right
00:37:19.480
the most evil newspaper in the world but I mean without doubt and I you know I don't even say
00:37:22.940
ironically um yeah I mean their use of you know core kind of moralizing words is just massively
00:37:30.180
increased you can you know those charts have been done by various academics um yeah I mean that is
00:37:36.220
it is a creation of a few journalists I mean the main thing is the obviously the internet has emptied
00:37:41.060
it so it's just much cheaper to run these kind of you know cultural sort of articles than like
00:37:49.180
a proper investigation or a news story that it's really expensive journalism there's just not the
00:37:53.220
money for it so it's much easier to make these kind of commentary things our chairs racists
00:37:56.920
yeah yeah exactly yeah i mean but it it's got so much worse i mean you know time what was it
00:38:02.000
there's an article the other day saying racial slur at baseball game or something and it was
00:38:06.440
like page and then you got to that paragraph 36 said oh yeah and it probably wasn't the n-word
00:38:10.920
it's something else what the point was this entire article about someone says rude words
00:38:16.440
hold the front page um yeah they've definitely got worse and there is you know there's definitely
00:38:22.460
there is statistics on american journalists their political slant has um you know hugely
00:38:27.740
changed i mean they've always been more left center because writers tend to be more left
00:38:32.420
center but by by about by the time that barrett obama uh got elected it was like overwhelmingly
00:38:39.120
left center and you know and public you know public opinion is often not accurate but they
00:38:45.600
of a rough idea what's going on so trust in the media is hugely increasing i think there's
00:38:49.100
decreased decrease sorry the other one um i think it was like you know it was like nine out ten
00:38:53.960
americans thought you know the the media was basically trying to get barrett obama elected
00:38:57.820
of course they were they were openly biased about the whole thing then the thing about trump is
00:39:01.700
because trump is like such like a comically bad guy you know like a really funny and evil person
00:39:07.100
who says terrible things he has this he had this amazing ability to just basically draw out their
0.99
00:39:11.720
extremism he would say something stupid their reaction was just like you just revealed how
0.99
00:39:16.220
mad you are as well like you're you know the thought leaders of the greatest country in the
1.00
00:39:20.800
world and you're utterly off your rocket all of you you know so some of them many of these people
00:39:25.180
are just so much more extreme than the rest of the population like how did you end up in positions
00:39:29.780
of power it's amazing but ironically they need trump because the moment he left power all their
00:39:34.640
ratings and their you know went through the floor i know that they had a sort of dynamic didn't they
00:39:40.840
together the media and Trump. I mean, I think that's sort of turning against Biden now, aren't
00:39:44.880
they? Someone, yeah, someone, I think someone tweeted out, they actually like did the transcript
00:39:49.020
of what he was saying. I mean, he's clearly not mentally at his best. And it was just, um, um,
00:39:54.940
and he just, he's obviously, yeah. So, you know, they would never do that before, especially in
00:39:59.180
the run-up to the election where they sort of made it clear that, you know, their job was to
00:40:02.820
get Biden elected. Do you want to promote your business to an intelligent audience who don't
00:40:09.180
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00:41:02.820
what happened to the idea of the media holding the powerful to account wasn't that the purpose
00:41:08.940
of the media um i don't know i think yeah yeah obviously i mean i mean yeah it isn't in some
00:41:16.340
ways but i think when you know america is so polarized isn't it that it's people once
00:41:22.520
polarization hits a certain point people don't really think about that all matters is like
00:41:25.980
winning all that matters is you know stopping the other side from scoring a point because
00:41:30.460
it becomes so existential isn't it stop i mean i kind of understand like trump was like
00:41:35.340
it was kind of unnerving you know seeing this is like man in charge of america and you tweet
00:41:40.320
completely reckless stuff so i can see why you know it was such an exact you know important
00:41:45.380
point to get rid of him um but yeah i think that once that happens you know there aren't that many
00:41:50.860
people who would you know take a massive hit for their team if it was if it was in the interest of
00:41:55.400
democracy are they i don't think we're we're as bad i mean i didn't i think we could get slightly
00:42:01.660
as bad we could get worse but i don't think we'll ever be i don't think we can be as bad as america
00:42:06.240
just as the dynamic of such a huge country that's so sort of diverse and not just culturally but
00:42:11.180
like socially as well what would you say to those people go look actually right the old institutions
00:42:16.600
are crumbling but this is a good thing this is important this is necessary they're no longer fit
00:42:45.880
money, which is that a good journalist can make more money.
00:42:53.640
that, you know, if no one's going to pay for your writing
00:43:07.420
I had a very love-hate relationship with The Guardian
00:43:20.940
is wrong about everything um so if the guard i mean the guardian's always in financial trouble
00:43:25.840
if the guardian closed i'd find i think that's a really sad thing um but yeah i mean i mean this
00:43:34.260
the same the same thing with the bbc i mean i think the bbc can't basically it can't never stop
00:43:39.820
its biases but at least it kind of understands them and it does believe in a sort of an idea
00:43:44.380
that it should be impartial i mean compared to cnn which is just junk which is so which is so bad
0.82
00:44:18.200
being on these programs and whatever television is basically made by 20 year olds yeah i never
00:44:24.780
realized that almost all of the people you encounter up up to the level of like executive
00:44:31.280
producer they're all in their early 20s yeah so i just think it's kind of inevitable that therefore
00:44:38.580
that if all the researchers and all the people that are making most of the decisions because
00:44:42.960
they are making most of the decisions they're the gatekeepers and that's the real power
00:44:46.840
uh a lot of that done um which is tangentially stuff like you know uh i'll get on this minute
00:44:52.940
well i mean on the look at sky sky was you know quite it wasn't right wing but it was kind of
00:44:58.740
like an itv you know it felt like sort of middle england and now sky is very very more great it's
00:45:03.560
much more like cnn and that's a generational thing people tell me that you know the young
00:45:06.900
ones come and say oh you know in the morning meetings oh we must cover this sort of classic
00:45:11.120
progressive issue and then you raise sort of a more you know delicate right wing issue um maybe
00:45:16.620
something was going on in Rotherham or something and they say no no no I don't think that's
00:45:19.520
appropriate for and you know those decisions made by the gatekeepers um you know that's yeah the
00:45:26.000
generational thing is what worries me you know that Harper's letter on that it was about the
00:45:30.980
trans thing wasn't it I think everything's about the trans thing these days and all these you know
00:45:34.400
I really admire these old style centrist liberals they believe and you know they believe in freedom
00:45:39.300
of speech they believe in this kind of I think slightly naive idea that if you all talk about
00:45:42.980
stuff you'll come to a reasonable you know idea and they believe also that their opponents aren't
00:45:47.840
evil which is like the central liberal idea but you know look at their average age it's all like
00:45:52.400
people steven pink and jk rowling all these people you know everything great the average age is like
00:45:56.420
65 while the average age of people you know denouncing them who wanted them all on the
00:46:01.960
chopping block they were like 28 it's like this is awful but this is our future is going to be like
00:46:17.540
So let's get a little bit conspiratorial about this
00:46:28.140
Do you not think there is an element of divide and conquer
00:46:33.900
because we're so focused on these particular issues
00:46:39.440
Priti Patel bringing in, you know, bills, you know,
00:46:41.840
that are going to limit the rights of journalists,
00:46:46.420
So it's a classic diversionary distraction tactic, would you say?
00:46:49.900
No, I don't think people think that through, probably.
00:46:52.480
I mean, I don't think, I don't believe in conspiracy theories.
00:46:58.400
Imagine the British government actually organising conspiracy.
0.99
00:47:01.380
i just think these things happen independently i mean yeah it definitely suits certain interests
00:47:07.240
that people aren't focused on things you know like freedom you know bills involved in limiting
00:47:13.040
people's freedoms protest or i mean the big one is you know 10 15 years ago it was all about you
00:47:18.940
know the occupy wasn't it about that's what i was going to say economic issues right yeah i mean i
00:47:23.960
think it definitely suits big corporations to oh look at gay rights trans rights look how nice
0.90
00:47:58.100
um telling me about you know we must talk about diversity today we really believe in diversity
00:48:04.680
this is great equality and these are like the richest like most sinister banks in the world
00:48:10.380
i mean he's like this is the man right they loaned the drug money i mean and then they talk about
00:48:15.360
diversity i mean that it's i started the thing on you know the hypocrisy of work capital and after
00:48:21.320
a while i just i got so many examples i just thought i thought maybe i'll write a book about
00:48:25.140
this but just after a while just there are so many it just seems that no one cares it's just
00:48:28.460
it's like so absurd it's like so it's just a humorous thing now you know it's like
00:48:32.080
sorry gay pride was sponsored by bae systems they're like literally selling
1.00
00:48:39.800
the kids in yemen get blown up and literally it's all uh all these and all these companies um
00:48:47.460
you know promoting and like if you pay whatever one percent your corporations to pay off some
00:48:52.840
person to say you're pro-diversity that's like nothing like a match compared to a government
00:48:57.180
saying oh we're gonna we're gonna massively punish you with taxes which is what like the orthodox
00:49:01.400
left would like um i mean my i've become as i get older i'm like more i suppose anti-business just
00:49:08.120
because but i think it must be just like the culture must be the driver because i think you
0.80
00:49:12.540
you people are horrible like you're so cynical and manipulative i'd much rather they were more like
00:49:18.020
we are more economically left-wing than social i mean i think that it's not old-fashioned that
0.99
00:49:22.420
poverty actually does matter it's like a real issue in the same way that people's sexual
00:49:27.000
identity is like much higher on the pyramid of needs right you need food first before you can
00:49:32.660
start thinking about your like higher spiritual needs um yeah i mean that definitely i don't
00:49:37.800
think it's seriously but it definitely it sort of incentivizes people to make that yeah um i mean i
00:49:43.920
worked very briefly in a strange career path like working for a financial company just writing stuff
00:49:54.500
Like, it makes you realise journalists are quite thick.
1.00
00:49:57.920
I was easily the stupidest person, like, by far.
0.99
00:50:00.420
And, you know, everyone there was, like, pro-Remain, for example.
0.99
00:50:06.920
But, you know, they would be quite liberal people,
00:50:12.780
Like, it's easy for them to accept, like, progressive rule.
00:50:18.880
um it's not threatening their financial interests of course i mean liberalism does dry you know
00:50:25.000
economic and social liberalism do go together there is a reason why britain is one of the
00:50:28.780
most liberal countries in the world it's the city of london is the prime driver i mean thatcher
00:50:32.240
was the creator of the sort of you know the younger generation liberals um liberals because
00:50:39.200
i think inevitably it kind of becomes more and more extreme until but you know it's no longer
00:50:43.180
liberalism anymore um where were we getting right we were just getting depressed that's where we
00:50:50.220
were sorry about that but but it's a good point family dinners must be must be fun at the west
00:50:58.880
oh yeah i mean my kids are going to grow up i'm just i've kind of kept off my real views to them
00:51:04.080
a little bit i don't want to i want them to sort of be to be liberal as their kids i want them to
00:51:08.280
be you know enjoy your life go to all these demos get stuck in it'll be fun you know and then when
00:51:13.440
you're a bit older you can you know realize it's all bollocks here's the red pill here's the black
1.00
00:51:17.460
pills um yeah exactly just enjoy yourself you know but um no yeah i keep but that's a big worry i i
00:51:24.660
don't know i i can't speak for everybody but it's certainly a big worry for me is like bringing
00:51:29.020
children into this world if if you're describing it accurately and then what are you bringing them
00:51:36.180
in the world too well i mean i i don't know i hear that a lot and then it's not more about the
00:51:42.980
the environmental thing it's normally that i mean it's good yeah i mean quite pessimistic about
00:51:49.860
the future of england really i mean a lot will depend what happens in america basically we're
00:51:54.260
basically dependent on them we're basically dependent america taking the right cultural
00:51:58.260
choices now and not becoming more divided and more extreme and sort of more i don't know my basic
00:52:08.280
is that it just makes people unhappy ultimately.
00:52:24.060
This is what you're going to do unless you're really
00:52:27.720
feel otherwise. This is the normal thing that most
00:52:33.900
will just encourage people to make terrible terrible life choices i mean the classic one
0.98
00:52:37.660
to come back to this you know why don't you go and mutilate yourself so you can't have children
0.99
00:52:42.420
later which is you know loads and loads of girls are getting this message from tiktok
0.99
00:52:46.980
just like let out all your most most like anti-social disagreeable personality traits and
00:52:53.900
just you know i mean the tiktok thing is what really that's the really depressing thing as a
00:52:58.880
parent. That is like the pathway to such terrible ideas. It's just basically a complete moral
00:53:05.560
anarchy in there. It's actually quite disturbing. So let's get into that. So what's going on on
00:53:10.360
TikTok? God, I feel like... Yeah, it is really... Okay, one of the things you can't say that you
00:53:18.840
probably get in trouble for is like, girls tend to be like a bit more conformist than boys. I mean,
0.95
00:53:23.580
and that's one thing Jordan Peterson says, and like, wow, you can't say that. It's like,
00:53:27.120
it's blandly obvious. So teenage girls are particularly susceptible to ideas, the spread
00:53:32.400
of ideas, like, like memes that can spread because social contagion. So, you know, it was anorexia
00:53:42.400
at one point, there is still anorexia, self harm and stuff. Like TikTok is just a complete world
00:53:48.240
of that, you know, all these terrible ideas are spread. And you know, one of the problems, you
00:53:53.920
know we have generally society is that no one wants to be the adult no one's to say no you
00:53:57.820
can't do that i'm telling you no it's not happening everyone wants to be your friend
00:54:00.940
and that kind of extends to children oh you must make the right choice in uh life um that's really
00:54:07.000
not a good idea with children i mean i would say as as a teenager i made terrible choices i had no
00:54:11.340
common sense no real wisdom i'm not particularly wise now but um you know you need people to have
00:54:17.220
these kind of guides guides you like this is the kind of this is what you should do this is how you
00:54:22.400
should behave around people um and tick tock is just all sorts of rubbish coming i mean i think
00:54:28.240
the chinese do actually censor it which is or at least they sort of fix it so pro chinese or what
0.80
00:54:34.640
they want people to um do while the western one is just anarchy so it's just complete crazed i mean
00:54:41.360
i think that is also what the chinese lesson will to us in future with their sort of societies like
00:54:47.140
we we have it ordered so you do certain things i think that will appear attractive to some people
00:54:51.860
who have enough of sort of the anarchy of what the western model um that's a bit of a side issue
00:54:58.660
yeah yeah tiktok is just bad it's really really bad kids they're not getting a smartphone until
00:55:03.840
they're about 30 correct yeah you actually that is i mean that's an example where that you know
00:55:09.180
i think they should just be it should be banned for under 16s it's if all the other kids have
1.00
00:55:13.440
you know smartphones it's very hard to say to your child you know you're going to be the only one
00:55:17.840
You're going to be the weird kid who wasn't allowed ITV as a kid.
00:55:21.220
You know, he wasn't allowed to watch Green Chill or, you know,
00:55:28.020
Mate, my kids are going to be social outcasts no matter what happens.
00:55:34.680
Listen, man, it's been an hour and it's flown by.
00:55:37.440
There's one question I want to ask at the end, right?
00:55:41.120
So you're saying society's going to hell in a handcuff.
00:55:45.040
But the thing that I've really enjoyed about this, though,
00:55:47.420
It's presented in this sort of playful English unattached way.
00:55:54.480
And it's quite enjoyable and it's a bit lighthearted,
00:56:04.320
society's about to crumble, everything's shit.
1.00
00:56:09.660
It's like my granny always thought she was dying.
00:56:11.940
She was proved correct eventually after 50, 60 years.
00:56:15.920
do you have any evidence that there's you're more accurate you're closer to like there was a point
00:56:22.840
when your granny saying she was about to die was actually starting to get pretty yeah yeah yeah
0.70
00:56:27.260
do you have any evidence to suggest that your diagnosis for society is actually a little bit
00:56:32.360
more accurate than it would have been 20 years ago uh i think if you went i mean i don't know
00:56:39.280
we were talking about this in the office if you went back to 2001 and you explained our worlds to
00:56:43.480
them. It would be pretty weird to explain the whole thing. Yeah,
00:56:47.140
I mean, we just got the Taliban in one, there's a war in Syria,
00:56:50.920
which Al Qaeda, like one of the moderate groups, you know, the
00:56:54.700
the main issue is about the rights for people like me to go to
00:56:58.420
women's toilets. That's like the cutting edge of like, social
1.00
00:57:05.800
By the way, the government's just locked you in your house for 15
00:57:08.540
Yes, we didn't actually mention lockdowns. That's interesting.
00:57:32.400
maybe climate change would actually do that
0.78
00:57:44.560
reading Small Men on the Wrong Side of History.
00:57:52.540
question for you. Which is always, what's the one thing
00:57:54.580
we're not talking about, but we really should be?
00:57:58.480
It's the kind of TikTok and the influence it's having
00:58:10.220
that's and and i think that's definitely the case uh the uncertainty now about like the
00:58:15.820
sexual evolution the biggest victims of that are basically teenage girls who are you know
0.83
00:58:21.560
all the studies show that they are just more and more miserable and you know sort of confused about
00:58:26.160
everything um and you know if you spend any time online that's clearly true of you know you know
00:58:33.400
even after they're 18 you know in their 20s so many of them seem to be like much unhappier than
00:58:39.920
they used to be and i you know i think that's sort of the end of liberalism really that's the
00:58:43.880
sort of end product that's why people have this kind of need for certainty the need and use of
00:58:48.220
order telling them what to do so that sounds very simplistic doesn't it um but i think yeah that'd
00:58:56.560
be like a progressive you know that's you know that's why the sort of people would turn i think
00:59:00.100
there is definitely things people will turn about against like sex positivity in the future there
00:59:03.720
will be some i mean i think you would talk about um will there be a reaction there'll be small
00:59:09.840
little reactions in certain areas i think yeah there won't be a big christian religious revival
00:59:14.700
but there'll be certain areas where there's a lot of like kickback um while in other areas you know
00:59:19.440
things will go on i think ed thank you so much for coming on the show it's been a pleasure if
00:59:25.200
people want to find you where's the best place to do that uh online yeah i guess on twitter just ed
00:59:32.760
west or unheard obviously just go to unheard you can find me there's a picture of me somewhere and
00:59:36.800
where can they get the book i guess jeff bezels is probably a thing there we go we've all sold
00:59:43.620
out uh ed thank you so much for coming on and thank you for watching at home and listening we
00:59:48.500
will see you very soon with another brilliant interview like this one or or show all of them
00:59:53.060
at 7 p.m uk time which is 2 p.m eastern take care and see you soon guys we hope you've enjoyed this
01:00:00.260
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